We have some new information regarding the first alpha and what will be happening tomorrow and this next week. This will be a smaller devblog compared to our others. Tyler will follow up with some of the new weapons/character art, and then we hope to have everyone playing very soon!

First, the bug we mentioned in our last update appears to be fixed. We took some extra time to test it a bit further as well. The bug raised concerns about how two alpha tests a month may make it difficult to add new features, as we’d need to be sure the game isn’t in an unstable state every two weeks. This isn’t very easy to do as some features can take a while to fully implement, and we would prefer not to be caught in the middle of this process.

We decided we would go ahead and wrap up what we had planned for test #2 and have it ready by time test #1 ends. So after the first test ends we will have a build set aside to set live two weeks after. This means the bugs that are present at the end of the first test of the month will be in the second test of the month. Meanwhile we will already be in the process of developing for the 3rd alpha and so on. This ensures each test has something unique to test while also not strapping us to two week deadlines.For this reason the test was not announced immediately after fixing the networking bug, and we’re currently aiming for the first weekend of may :)

Tomorrow:

If you missed our last update post, the first alpha passed our tests of two, a test of 6, and a test of 12. Later this week we planned to have one final pretest that will be a full match of 20, and then one final test for overall stability.

For this last test, as with the others, we planned to recruit streamers and other friends that helped us during the Kickstarter as they’re very easy to work with and flexible when it comes to timezones. They would be streaming for a few hours (as that’s the only way we could not interrupt their schedules) before the pretest would close and no one would have access until the true first alpha test. Why streamers? It would be difficult to round up random backers at such short notice and within such a small window of time. We will be looking into using the beta branch for pretesting in the future, but there are some cost concerns there.

Plans changed slightly when EvilBunny informed us that many streamers were holding a fundraiser for her on Saturday for her back surgery, and they would like to do it playing Blackwake as one of the games. Of course we agreed, and we hope not only will our backers watch the streams but that you will please show support. We’re trying our best to have the build ready for the event as we had to rush some final fixes. The time slot for Blackwake may be around 7pm EST but we'll post again on twitter/facebook/reddit when that will be live too.

If you don’t know who EvilBunny is, she is a good friend who established Blackwake in the Twitch community during the Kickstarter and raised huge amounts of awareness for the game. She is a mod for over 10+ large streamers and we are forever thankful that she, out of love of the game, used her connections to put us in the view of many popular streamers. If you backed because you saw the game on Twitch, she is the reason.

ART

7 Barrel matchlock Arquebus

So there is something interesting about this weapon. It has 4 barrels on the rear, so what does this mean? I wouldn't want to chase someone who has this weapon ;)

Naval dirk dagger

Melee will be coming in a huge update further down the alpha. All the FPS and third person animations need to be done correctly with our new character models. Rather than a bunch of flailing spaghetti arms like we've had previously it'll be more in depth, akin to Chivalry/Mount & Blade. We'll get more into that later, but here are some melee weapons which are ready for now :)

Rapier

Two handed Axe

Character stuff

We've worked on some head hair, facial hair and a tricorne hat. This is for our basic implementation of customization. This will be coming in the second dev update of the alpha, as the systems also need to be put into place with unlocking, and in-game score system.

Hair textures are still work in progress. He's also looking a little bit sad right now, don't worry we'll have angry pirates too.

One of our mid tier pirate outfits has also been textured. Trenchcoats coming in soon ;)

You may have also missed this video of a test Dakota and I did while finding some interesting things!

Keep a lookout for the streams if you're interested to see how the build is going for alpha :) We are working hard everyday to get Blackwake ready, it's on the horizon mateys! We'll do another quick update right before it hits so everyone can get their grog and pirate banter ready.